Fifty years ago this month, Sputnik shocked the western world with its modest beep-beep-beeping. As far as the US government was concerned, that basketball-sized metal ball flying overhead meant the sky was falling. If the Russians could lob a payload, however small, into orbit, that meant they could drop a bomb wherever they pleased. In response, the Eisenhower administration created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which in 12 years went from barely getting a rocket off the ground to landing people on the moon.

How far we have fallen. Now the biggest headline-grabbers in space are the bizarre exploits of a love-addled astronaut driving cross-country to confront a rival with assorted instruments of nefarious intent, and the perennial question of whether Nasa's space shuttle, with its external fuel tank's propensity for shedding lethal chunks of foam, can make it to space and back on its next flight without disintegrating into fiery chunks.